The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to predict the loss of thousands of species in temperature-sensitive biodiversity hot spots such as the Great Barrier Reef, off the east coast of Australia, if temperatures go on rising.

For some species, such as corals, there will no longer be a climate that is suitable for them to survive. Others, like the North American rock rabbit, the pika, may be unable to reach distant regions that are more suitable.

In Europe the species expected to be challenged include the Spanish imperial eagle, the dunnock, crested tit and Scottish crossbill.

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The final draft of the "policy-makers' summary" of the report on impacts of climate change, seen by The Daily Telegraph, gives higher certainty than before to the predictions of likely consequences of continued fossil fuel emissions at present levels.

Sources close to the groups negotiating the wording of the summary said last night that there was a "great rift" between Saudi Arabia and the United States and other countries over the emphasis given to predictions, including those of species extinction.

Saudi Arabia was said to be trying to insert text emphasising the benefits of warming for crop production in the far north of Europe and Siberia.

The US was said to be trying to have a map of the world showing significant observed changes in global temperatures since 1970 taken out of the report altogether. Sources close to the discussions said talks were expected to go on all night.

Unlike IPCC Working Group I's report in January on the science of climate change, which predicted a three-degree global average temperature rise by 2100, Working Group II's report contain the specifics of how the world will be affected by warming temperatures over a century.

The report says the world's poor will be in the front line against climate change, facing death and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms and droughts.

It predicts that the worst affected regions of the world will be the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small low-lying islands, and the deltas of the major Asian rivers.

Michael Meacher, the former environment minister and stalking horse challenger to Gordon Brown, said that neither the Government nor the Tory leader David Cameron had "fully grasped the scale of the challenge, let alone proposed any serious way of meeting it".

He added: "Man-made climate change is the single greatest threat facing the world. But so far our policies have been marked by timidity and inadequacy."